


A Shore Adventure

by RobberBaroness



Category: Treasure Island & Related Fandoms, Treasure Island - Lavery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Mashup with the book, general creepiness on silver's part i don't know how to tag for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24367516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: In which the Hawkins girl undergoes a harrowing ordeal, lives are saved, and a pirate's motives can never be truly guessed.
Relationships: Jim Hawkins/John Silver
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	A Shore Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically an attempt to bring the climax of the play closer to that of the book. It follows on an alternate scene from the script, where Jim herself kills Israel Hands.
> 
> Thank you to my discord friends for helping me brainstorm this!

Everything that had happened in the last evening swam in Jim’s head- the mutiny, Ben Gunn, Smollett’s murder, her own recent killing of Hands- and through it all, she tried to make sense of what Silver was telling her. It halfway made sense; she’d last seen her friends in a state of desperation, and she couldn’t imagine them giving up the map under any other circumstances. But to abandon her? Declare that she meant nothing to them, that they’d just as soon see her dead as alive? After she’d risked her life, sailed a ship all by herself, stabbed a man in a struggle and watched him die in front of her?

She couldn’t believe that. She couldn’t believe it had all been for nothing.

“You’re lying,” Jim said to Silver. “The doctor swore to Grandma to keep me safe. You ordered Killigrew to shoot me only this very day. Between you, I know who I trust.”

Silver shook his head and stepped closer, never letting the pistol in his hand waver.

“That’s really a shame, my dear girl. Because believe me or not, we’re going to need you to read that map for us. And I really wanted you to come with us without a fight.”

“I won’t help-”

“Didn’t let me finish there!” Silver’s tone was the same as it had been in the days when she’d thought him a friend- soft, kind, easy and even with a touch of humor. “I was going to say that I hoped you’d join us because I like you. Wasn’t ever pretending about that. And because I’m so awfully fond of you, the worst I’ll do if you say no is kill you. But them?” He cocked his head in the direction of the Walrus crew. “These are desperate, brutal men. If I told you the things they did under Flint, I’m afraid you’d never get a moment’s sleep again. If I put the situation to Black Dog or George Badger, they’d be all for torturing you until you read that map to us, then maybe a bit more afterwards in case you were lying. Trust me or not, I’m the best protection against them you have at the moment.”

“Like you protected Ben Gunn?”

Silver’s gaze faltered for a moment, and it was then that Jim took her chance to run. She didn’t get very far- Silver grabbed her by the back of her shirt, then pulled her back close so that his arm was around her waist.

“That was a poor calculation!” he said. “Joan! Get the rest of that rope and tie her hands! Leave an end of the rope to hold- she’s not getting away from us this time. The rest of you, stay clear and keep your hands to yourselves!”

So that was his idea of protection, was it? How very noble of him. Most likely, he wanted her as unhurt as possible so she wouldn’t get any brave ideas about how death was better than being in their captivity. Jim had a few thoughts about it when Joan the Goat bound her hands together, but as bad as her night had been, it wasn’t yet so bad as all that. She wanted to live. She wanted to find the doctor and the squire again, if the pirates hadn’t already killed them and thrown their bodies to the sea. She wanted to go back to her grandmother, who had worried so much before allowing her to go away on an adventure. And she wanted to survive long enough to see the pirates hang, that was for certain.

“I killed your man on the ship,” she said to Silver through gritted teeth. “He came at me with a knife, and I killed him.”

Silver smiled and gave her an affectionate touch on the shoulder.

“Good girl. I said you were smart. Now why don’t you keep being smart and read what it says on that map?”

 _I hate Long John Silver!_ Jim thought, but she read.

***

She didn’t just read- she worked out the clues for them as well. It was partly out of fear that if the treasure hunt went too slowly they’d decide she was dead weight and shoot her after all, but there was some genuine thrill to the puzzles. Flint hadn’t thought anyone except himself clever enough to work it out- she was living proof that he was wrong.

Living. For now.

“How do I know that you won’t just kill me once we’ve found the treasure?” she asked in a moment where he’d stopped tugging on her rope and allowed her to catch her breath on the sand. Silver looked offended, and it was impossible for her to tell to what extent that was genuine.

“Kill you even if you cooperate? What would I profit from that?”

“One less witness to testify at your trial.”

“You think I’m going to trial after all this? With Flint’s treasure in my pocket and your doctor and squire turned tail? You think anyone’s going to find me, let alone try and hang me?”

Jim saw the logic in his words, and was far from comforted by it.

“What does happen to me, then? When you’ve found the treasure and are making your escape. If not death, what are you going to do with me?”

Silver looked at her very strangely, saying nothing. Jim held his gaze as steadily as she could. Finally he gave a tug at the end of her rope, and she stumbled to her feet.

“Come on, cabin girl!” he said. “No more time to waste!”

“Cabin girl!” screeched that abominable bird, and the other pirates laughed as Jim scrambled along with them. Silver glared at the others, as if he had been caught in something.

“Keep up, men!” he called to them. “Don’t let a poor one-legged man and a half-drowned girl be the first to our destination!”

Half-drowned was right, because she’d had to swim away from these very men shooting at her! As if Silver had forgotten that! Jim was just mentally repeating every bit of foul language she’d ever heard uttered by the crew of the Hispaniola when a shove to her back made her trip over and fall to her knees. She turned her head to cast a glare at whoever had pushed her, but Silver was quicker, and without dropping the end of the rope, he had brought a blade to point at Black Dog’s throat.

“Told you, hands to yourself! This girl-”

“We know, Silver!” said Black Dog hastily. “No killing the girl without your say-so. Just trying to hurry her along.”

Silver helped Jim up, and his hand lingered on her arm for a moment.

“It’s like I said before, girl. You belong to me.”

Jim shook his hand off her arm. She’d been fool enough to take comfort in those words once; it wasn’t going to work on her a second time.

***

It wouldn’t be much longer until they reached the buried treasure- and, Jim considered, the end of the pirates’ use for her. Maybe they’d end it quick, with a bullet, or maybe they’d leave her stranded on the island to die or go mad like Ben Gunn. To spite them, Jim stubbornly kept her mouth shut while they tried to find the mysterious pointing finger mentioned in Flint’s rhyme, but her eyes went to the stars and Silver followed her gaze towards the cluster resembling a fist. Flint’s fist, with its pointing finger, had been found at last.

“Flint’s fist, in the sky! That’s my girl, smart as paint!”

And then, as the pirates cheered and dug their knives into the earth, Silver put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him, wearing a smile that suggested they were the best of friends and there had never been so much as a harsh word between them.

“We’re going to be rich, darling! The stars handed you to me, and the stars have given us our fortune!”

And then he kissed her suddenly, his hands digging into her shoulders, only releasing her when she’d been left thoroughly out of breath. Jim felt tears coming to her eyes, and if her hands hadn’t been bound she thought she might have struck him. Here? Now? After betraying her trust, killing the crew, and abducting her across the island? He’d kiss her with her hands still tied?

Well, what else had she expected from a pirate?

As if she wasn’t already outraged, Joan and Mickey were snickering (either at the kiss or at her stunned reaction,) and Silver didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed.

“A little younger than usual, isn’t she?” asked Dick the Dandy, and Jim felt so embarrassed she wished she could disappear.

***

They hadn’t killed her. That was a good start, Jim supposed. She sat glumly beneath the cold light of Flint’s fist beside Silver, who had once again pleaded his status as “a poor one-legged man” to get out of crawling beneath the earth. The Walrus crew believed him, of course. She couldn’t look down on them for it because she’d believed him herself. It was at least comforting to know that she wasn’t any more gullible than the average pirate.

Silver kept smiling at her in an odd way, until Jim couldn’t take it anymore.

“What’s so funny?” she said at last. Silver only kept smiling and shook his head.

“Wish I could tell you that, Jim. Really wish I could. But I’m afraid I can’t quite trust you right now…”

“About as much as I can trust you!” she replied, unwilling to let a statement so rich lie on its own. It didn’t seem to allay any of Silver’s excitement.

“Oh, cabin girl, you have no idea what lies in store for you! Did you think I wasn’t going to give you a share? Think I’d send you back to your inn when you could have a castle?”

“I don’t think you’d give anyone a share if it meant making yours smaller.”

“You’ve got your equations figured out all right! But I don’t plan on letting my share get any smaller. In fact…” (and here he withdrew his pistol) “it’ll be getting a lot bigger soon, the way I calculate it.”

Before Jim could decide whether or not to yell and warn the others, there was a commotion down below. Of course, Silver protested that he couldn’t be expected to leave a hostage all alone (so now she was a hostage again! One status when he wanted her on his side, one status when he wanted the pirates!) and the argument about whether he was expected to come down there himself lasted long enough that the others began to come clambering out of the hole- empty handed. Silver didn’t put the pistol away, but he looked unspeakably irritated.

“There’s nothing down there!” proclaimed George Badger. “You and that cabin girl of yours have led us to an empty cavern! After all that work to get the map, you get us a lying reader! It’s not fair!”

Silver turned to Jim, who shook her head.

“I read what was written on that map,” she said. “If I’d known this island well enough to deceive you, I’d have led you to a cliff where you would all fall and break your necks, not just a big cave full of nothing.”

“She has a point,” said Silver, “and the girl’s a terrible liar. You lot just haven’t looked hard enough!”

“Maybe,” said Black Dog. “Maybe. Or maybe we better make absolutely certain that she’s reading it right.” He advanced on them, and Jim could only hope he was as clumsy with his blade as Israel Hands had been with his. Silver’s face was cold and impassive. “You’ve had your fun, we tried it your way,” Black Dog continued. “Now hand over the girl and we’ll give it another try.”

Silver sighed. “The girl is yours,” he said, handing his end of Jim’s rope toward Black Dog (lying scoundrel! False friend! Murdering pirate!) but before the other man had it in his hand, there was a very loud noise uncomfortably close to her ear and a great spray of blood. Silver had put a bullet through Black Dog’s head, and as the other pirates shouted in alarm or reached for their own pistols, he seized Jim’s arm and pulled her alongside him in a dash towards a set of large rocks.

While Jim caught her breath, Silver took aim from behind cover and fired upon his old shipmates.

“Why did you save me?” Jim asked between the dreadful sound of gunshots.

“I said I was awfully fond of you. And I don’t think you were lying about that map.”

Of course. That damn map. And just when her heart had been moved. God, she wished she could rewrite this scene into one where her brave sailing hero had saved her from being abducted by pirates, instead of one where he was murdering his way out of a situation he had caused with dubious motives for taking her along!

“And I’m still your best shot at the treasure, then,” she said glumly.

“It’s all part of the same equation. Less shares this way, anyhow, though I wish I’d been left to fix that with my original plan.”

As her captor was no longer holding the rope leading her, Jim thought this was probably a good time to make her getaway. Stepping carefully back so as not to lose sight of anyone with a gun (My feet, they won’t go forward, they insist on going back! Her treacherous brain reminded her, just in case she was thinking of being at all grateful to Long John Silver) she edged away from the pirate onto the soft sand…

“Jim!” She hadn’t been quiet enough, it seemed. “You’re not running away, just when the adventure is picking up?” Silver grabbed at her arm, she took another step back-

And that was when Jim’s foot hit the entrance to a tunnel, and they both came crashing down into a part of the cavern the pirates hadn’t found, right into the presence of Trelawny, Livesay, Grey, Sue and Ben Gunn.

***

Suddenly, everyone was talking at once.

“Jim!” said Squire Trelawny.

“We thought you’d betrayed us!” said Doctor Livesay.

“Betrayed you?” said Jim indignantly. “This villain here tied me up and carried me off across this hateful island!” She extended her bound hands as proof, and Livesay pulled her close with a gasp, then pointed a pistol at Silver’s head.

Silver put his hands up and offered a smile.

“I did save you, remember? Black Dog was upon you, and I ruined everyone’s plans to save you from a dreadful fate!”

“It is true,” Jim said. “He did save my life, though he was the one who put me in company with those pirates in the first place.”

“Our good friend Silver,” said Ben Gunn. “Always so protective when it suits him.”

Silver looked at Ben with horror in his eyes.

“Can- can anyone else see that boy? Please tell me the rest of you can see that boy!”

No one bothered to answer him.

“I suppose he must have had a change of heart,” murmured the Squire (Jim couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic,) “after the shameful murders of Red Ruth and Captain Smollett.”

“Come now!” insisted Silver. “I wasn’t the one who did either of them in! I believe that would be Dick and George, respectively.”

“When I think,” Doctor Livesay said to Jim, “of how I promised your grandmother I would protect you, only to let you fall into the foul hands of the vilest abductors and seducers-”

“He didn’t seduce me!” Jim burst out hastily. “He only kissed me, and I didn’t kiss him back!”

There was silence for a moment, in which Jim once again wished she could disappear. Silver was right- she really had no ability to lie. And then all at once everyone was shouting again.

***

Ben Gunn was all for leaving Silver tied up in a ditch in the most misbegotten corner of the island, and Grey offered his agreement. Doctor Livesay was inclined to shoot him, and Squire Trelawny seemed halfway convinced of Silver’s pleas that he had been born anew under the kind guidance and influence of good friends. Jim argued that, seeing as he had saved her life, they ought to at least bring him back to England for fair trial, and in the end, hers was the argument that prevailed. They loaded him in irons onto the ship, along with the treasure that her friends had unearthed.

“We had set a trap,” Doctor Livesay explained, “and the pirates just missed falling into it.”

Jim didn’t like the thought of Silver buried under a collapsing roof of treasure. She also didn’t care for the thought that she could very well have been beside him when it happened. Perhaps it was this thought that led her to visit him in his captivity, late at night when no one could keep her away from him for her own protection.

He still smiled to see her, after all they’d been through.

“My cabin girl!” Silver said. “Knew you wouldn’t abandon me.”

“I probably should. You’ve been no good to anyone. But-” the stars haunted her memory, the stars that had guided her to steer the Hispaniola to the island and save her friends- “but I don’t want to see you hanged. I’ll speak for you at your trial. I’ll tell them you saved me.”

Silver shook his head.

“Oh, have no fear of my hanging, darling. I won’t be in England for long.” He leaned forward. “You don’t have to be, neither. You could still come away with me. We could take shares of the treasure, live in castles away from all these respectable folk.”

Jim fought back tears as she shook her head. She wasn’t standing close enough for Silver to reach her- she wasn’t that much of a fool- so he simply blew her a kiss, as he once had done to the north star. The star that was meant to guide her through this evil world. Jim left him there with the stars and his kiss on her mind, burned into her memory forever.

She wasn’t terribly surprised when he managed to disappear, along with a portion of the treasure and the jolly boat. She hoped his ridiculous parrot found its way back to him.


End file.
